Reporting systems for energy gathering installations already exist in the practice. These reporting systems are installed by companies such as Southern California Edison in order to track the power being generated by various owned power generating facilities. These systems are also used to track the power generated by third party facilities that contribute power purchased by the company. Most of these systems register the amount of energy deposited into the grid and also monitor supply and demand during peak and off peak hours. Using these tools, companies such as Southern California Edison manage the resources of their grid and make changes and alterations based upon real time data received from the field.
Currently, an increasing number of alternative energy gathering installations are being built and implemented across the globe. Alternative energy resources include those operating based on factors such as solar power, wind, tidal power, etc. Alternative energy generation systems are typically used to solve local power issues, such as street lights, home or business power needs. Such systems can be interconnected to a grid system for their generated power to be sold to public or private utilities. Currently alternative energy systems such as wind, solar, geothermal and some small hydropower systems generate Megawatt volumes of power. The power generated by these systems may be utilized locally or be interconnected back to the grid system.
Alternative energy resources, due to their nature, are oftentimes dependent on specific conditions in the environment such as the availability of sunshine, wind, and other similar factors, which may vary from day to day and minute to minute. Unlike alternative energy resources, traditional energy resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy are usually based upon large reserves. Thus the energy gathered by alternative energy resources is somewhat more volatile in its generation and supply than existing traditional power generating systems.
A typical monitoring system employs conventional monitoring models to oversee power generation. Also, the system employs grids in order to model and assess the meeting of demands of power generation. Control centers monitor capacity, maintenance, and production of power plant installations. The data from these installations are absorbed by the main grid control room facilities and further employs to model real time power needs throughout the grid. The obtained data are also used to track the specific amount of energy distributed into the grid by suppliers as well as the amount of energy utilized by customers for the purpose of billing.
Monitoring systems are configured to be able to alternate between various power resources in order to supply different parts of the grid with power. The alternation is done based upon need and the ability to construct a certain amount of redundancy to supply power to certain parts of the grid where possible.